


The Olympics, Six Years Later

by HMS_Chill



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, for flavor, mostly hurt ngl, no one dies I swear, some gay history thrown in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22382263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HMS_Chill/pseuds/HMS_Chill
Summary: Prompt: The RWRB gang involved in a sort of shooting or something at a really huge international event. Worst-Injured Character (Henry) Half-Conscious And Begging To Know If The Others (Alex most especially) Are Okay.
Relationships: Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor, June Claremont-Diaz/Nora Holleran/Percy "Pez" Okonjo
Comments: 30
Kudos: 236





	The Olympics, Six Years Later

"I can't do it. I need a big, strong athlete to carry me; my legs are too sore," Alex complains. "There were so many steps yesterday. I'm going to die." 

They're only halfway to their seats for the 2022 olympics, but after their trip to the Great Wall the day before, they're all starting to feel it. Bea, June, and Pez had opted to take the skylift to the top, leaving them well rested to enjoy the wall itself (which was comprised almost entirely of more stairs), but Nora had dared the boys to take the stairs with her and raced them to the top. It was a great idea in the moment, but between that and the number of steps on the wall itself, they're all regretting it the next day. 

"Race you to the seats," Nora says, and Alex perks up almost immediately, pushing past the others to elbow her out of the way and get what could only be described as a "running" start if his bedraggled slouching upward counts as running. Nora's not far behind. They're both out ahead of the others, muscles straining, panting and laughing and elbowing each other, when it happens.

The next day, someone will say it was just bad construction. The stadium went up too quickly, and some things didn't set just right or get checked well enough. Someone else will say it was sabotage; sugar mixed into the concrete to weaken it as an act of resistance. Someone else will say a bomb went off, and people will talk about whether it was too early or too late or right on time. But in the moment, all Henry knows is that one second, he's trying not to be too obvious about watching Alex's ass, and the next, the steps below him are falling away. He barely has time to scream. 

Alex and Nora feel the steps shake. There's a crash, the sounds of collapse. Someone screams. They turn around a second too late to see it happen. Henry's gone. Pez is gone. June and Bea are on the other side of a hole in the stairs, one that goes straight down to the basement of the stadium, where it ends in a pile of rubble. Bea has her hands over her mouth, a picture of horror, and Alex's brain starts to short circuit as he tries to process Henry's absence. Beside him, nora is running forward. He's not sure if she's going to try to jump over the hole or look into it, but he grabs her arm to hold her back just in case. She leans over the edge, then shouts.

"He's... he's... Alex, help me." She's reaching into the hole, and when Alex comes level with her, he can see Pez, clinging to a broken piece of metal with wide eyes. Alex lies down beside her, and between the two of them, they get Pez out. Nora wraps him in a hug immediately, but Alex is back to the edge of the hole, looking frantically. Henry has to be there somewhere, too. He has to be holding on. He has to be safe. 

"Henry! Henry, where are you?" He doesn't realize he's crying until there's a hand on his shoulder, and Bea's pulling him up and into a hug. "Henry... he's... he's down there somewhere. He's not... He's still here. I know it. I... He's not... I'd know if he was."

Bea just holds him close, and they're both sobbing. There are other arms around them, and June starts trying to guide them up and away from the hole. Alex only lets her move him down the stairs to the ground floor, where he and Bea both settle as close to the rubble as they can get and refuse to go anywhere else. Alex knows that if he moves, if he leaves, he won't be there when they find Henry. He has to stay, because when they pull Henry out of the rubble, Alex has to be there to love him right away. So he stays put, and so does Bea. There are people moving around them, crews starting to move rubble and officials shouting in what feels like every language on the planet. Alex barely processes any of it. He refuses to process anything beyond Bea's hand in his and the pile of rubble in front of him, because anything else, anything more than this terror, will destroy him.

-

Henry knows, logically, that he must have blacked out as he fell. Because even if he is surrounded by nothing but darkness, death shouldn't hurt this much. He tries to shift, tries to move, but he can't. Something's pressing down on his legs, something else on his chest. He's lucky to have his head and an arm relatively free. Instead, he does what he can to take stock of his situation, asking himself what's happened, what hurts, and what he can control. His mind won't focus. At least the answer to what hurts is simple: everything. Every part of his body is in pain, and when he tries to cough the grime out of his throat, the pain that shoots through his ribs makes everything flash white. In the pitch blackness, it's almost a relief.

In his pocket, his phone buzzes. It's enough to make him laugh a bit, though that hurts as much as anything else. Even at the best of times, he doesn't answer his phone for anyone but--

Alex.

Alex had been higher up. He'd had farther to fall. It's a miracle Henry survived, but Alex...

No. He isn't dead. If he was dead, Henry would know. But if he's not dead, that means he's down here somewhere, running out of air and probably hurt worse than Henry is. He's hurt worse and probably buried deeper, and Henry feels his heart start pounding at that. It's going to hurt like hell, but he takes a deep breath anyway and shouts, "Alex! Alex!" 

He barely manages those two before he's reduced to coughing up the dust he's inhaled, trying to hear any sort of response over it. Deafening silence. In theory, he knows yelling won't really change anything. He should protect his throat, make sure not to make enough noise to unbalance anything, and wait for someone to find him. He'll have enough air for a while, and he doesn't seem to be bleeding, so he should be okay. Unless he's bleeding internally. Or unless someone digging shifts something the wrong way. Or unless this was an attack of some sort and the area isn't safe enough for relief teams at all.

He's thought about dying, of course. He's probably thought about dying more than the average twenty-something, given the number of 'Someone-Might-Try-To-Kill-You' lectures he grew up with and the raging dumpster fire that was the years after his dad's death. But he hasn’t thought about it all that much recently. With Alex and their friends, with things as perfect as they are, death seems miles away. It’s not something Henry’s wished for since they got together, and not something he’s given much thought to recently. 

He thinks about it now, and he's surprised to find himself a little scared. He pushes it down, and quotes float to the front of his mind, snatches of other people’s words, glimpses into their views of death so he won’t have to imagine his own. 

“... the moment we enter crying to the moment we leave dying...”

“... dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”

“... look for me under your boot-soles...” 

Henry tries to cling to those, tries to piece together enough bits of their thoughts and words into an idea of his own. But faced with the possibility, with the idea of actually leaving behind Alex and the others, of abandoning the future they could have together, he can't seem to think of anything else.

When another thought surfaces, though, it courses through him with a pain worse than anything he's felt yet. It's a reminder that Alex fell, too. He had to have. If Alex fell, or if any of their friends did, that means his own death isn't the one Henry needs to worry about. If he loses Alex, if he loses Pez or Bea or any member of their group, he's going to fall apart. New words replace the old, words of grief indescribable, the life he could find beyond this mess.

"...while I had him the rest seemed good enough/ But he ain’t here...” 

“... he is lost among the stars...”

“... I cannot now accustom myself to your absence...” 

And that's when the tears start to gather in his eyes, when the sobs begin to tear out of him, shooting pain through his throat and ribs that only amplifies them. He's scared. Looking at how badly everything could go wrong is terrifying, and even imagining how much he could have already lost is the worst thing he's ever felt. If he's lost them, or if he's about to make them feel the pain he's terrified of, he's not sure things would ever be alright again. 

His tears have slowed, and he's starting to get dizzy when a shower of pebbles hits his forehead. He realized he's probably bleeding from somewhere around the time his eyelids started to droop closed, but he forces them to open. There's nothing to see but the blackness he's been surrounded by since he fell, but something's happening. The pebbles have to have meant something. When he was a kid, getting briefed on what to do in case of a fire, they taught him to tap the floor so that rescuers could find him. He's not sure what it will do in this case, but he has to try. His hand feels like lead as he lifts it, but he manages to tap three times. Three little taps, just like he’d do on Alex’s knee or the back of his hand somewhere public. Three little taps, like the ones he’s gotten used to getting in return, when Alex needs his attention or when he’s given an interviewer an answer that Alex particularly appreciates. 

Three little taps: ‘I love you’.

He tries to force himself to do it again, but his hand is too heavy. It’s getting hard to think now, and the sliver of light that's opened above him feels like the other end of the universe. Still, he fights to keep his eyes on it. Because somewhere, somewhere in that light, is Alex. He knows it.

-

When they pull Henry free of the rubble, coughing, he’s the same color as the sheets on the gurney. His throat is rubbed so raw from the gritty air that breathing hurts, meaning his voice is shot, but he manages to rasp, “Alex? The... the others... is Alex okay?” 

The paramedic smiles slightly, but moves aside without answering. Henry’s fighting to keep his eyes open, to look for Alex as best he can. He has to find him. Then there’s a hand grabbing at Henry’s, and he can hear Alex’s voice, wrapping around him like a blanket as his eyes drift closed. He doesn’t trust himself to speak, not with the condition of his throat and his lungs, but he taps Alex’s hand three times. The gurney starts to roll as he hears Alex sniffle, but the hand never leaves his. With all of the chaos around them, the plethora of languages and the shouting of the paramedics, the only thing Henry can focus on is Alex’s hand in his. He knows he’s probably lost consciousness at least once, but for every moment he’s even marginally awake, Alex is holding his hand. And more times than he can count, Alex is giving it three little taps. When he manages to give them back, he's rewarded with a kiss to the back of his hand, and he could swear he hears Alex sniffle a bit more.

-

He wakes up properly in a bed with clean sheets, Alex’s hand still holding his despite the fact that Alex is deeply asleep in the chair next to him. It hurts to breathe, hurts to think, hurts to move, but he turns as far as he can toward Alex anyway, trying to see if he’s hurt. 

He’s dirty, covered in the same layer of grime Henry is. But he’s not obviously bandaged, and he’s not in a hospital bed. He seems to be okay. Across the room, June, Pez, and Nora are piled nearly on top of each other on a couch, some sort of arrangement that only they could ever make comfortable. Bea is in an armchair next to them, sleeping as well. Henry smiles and taps Alex's hand three times, and Alex squeezes back. Henry lets his eyes close again. Alex is okay, their friends are okay, and that means that everything else will be okay, too.

**Author's Note:**

> The 2022 olympics are in Beijing! And I've been there, so I can write about it a bit more easily, which is fun given how important the olympics are to these boys! And from what I remember, there are just... so many god damn stairs to get up to the top of the Great Wall, y'all. Then once you're up, there's just... more stairs. It's all stairs (until you take the slide down, which is awesome).  
> -  
> Sources for quotes (all of which are gay):  
> -Todd, Dead Poet's Society  
> -"Dulce et Decorum Est", Wilfred Owen  
> -"Song of Myself", Walt Whitman  
> -"The Lost Pardner", Badger Clark  
> -"Last Meeting", Seigfried Sassoon  
> -A letter from Lafayette to Washington, 1799  
> -  
> As always, I'm [HMS-Chill](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hms-chill) on tumblr for fic stuff, and I'd love to chat either there or here. Thanks y'all!


End file.
